Broadwell Y-series Android tablet gets Core branding

We have managed to get a glimpse of Intel’s plans for the latter half of the year and it looks like there will be an Android tablet based on Broadwell Y silicon launching before the end of the year.

This is an Android based, Core-branded tablet and you should expect Core CPU and graphics performance. This sounds like a really fast dual-core with four threads. The tablet is 9mm thick and it is a detachable, i.e. there’s a keyboard dock in tow. It will come with a machined aluminium chassis in sizes of 10.6 to 13.3 inches. The resolution on these devices is listed as QHD or Quad HD, 2560x1440. We had a chance to spend some time with the Asus Transformer Pad TF701T with a 10-inch 2560x1600 300ppi screen and we can tell you that it looks great.

Intel expects 8-hour battery life from this device in a normal use scenario. It naturally comes with 2x2 ac WiFi support as well as a dual array microphone. The tablet has an 8-megapixel front camera and 13-megapixel rear camera and comes with up to 64GB of storage.

The price should sit between $499 for entry level, lesser specced devices, all the way to over $799 and more for the full Monty. Broadwell Y looks like a great processor and by the time it ships there should be a final Android L version with full 64-bit support.

Intel surely has a lot to offer in terms of 64-bit performance and might give some of its competitors a run for their money, but history teaches us that Intel had a better success with Windows based machines than any alternative operating systems. It took Intel and AMD more than 10 years to render 32-bit Windows obsolete and we hope that it won’t take that long for Android to achieve the same. Let’s see what the new ART 64 bit runtime can do against the old 32bit JIT.

The Core 5Y70 is a dual-core with four threads and a base clock of 1.1GHz and turbo core at 2.6GHz and there will be slower versions to accommodate cheaper tablets.